Since i have started having relationships i have had some bad experiences. Not really bad, but have been cheated on, only there because of attraction not because he actually cared etc. I know not all men are the same etc but when in the majority of your relationships you have been treated like crap, it seems impossible to believe people want to be with you and dont have an alterior motive.

I ruined my last relationship and it didnt last long because i was really paranoid and ended up questioning everything. If i didn't hear from him much in a day i would be convinced and feel he just didnt like me much. Even if things are going well, i think things must be too good to be true. Im basically just really paranoid and insecure. Its hard to believe someone actually wants to be with me for who i am and prefers me to other girls. Because this is how i feel, it shows through little things i do and i end up appearing clingy and arguing over small things.

I really want to change, i don't want to ruin another relationship. Does anyone have any advice?

Work on your self esteem before getting in another relationship - otherwise your insecurities will ruin it and another bad experience with get you into a pattern of behaviour that is really hard to get out of.

Try not to! Dont worry! Insecurity is going to kill you on all levels, I think deep down you dont trust the guy you are with. The more clingy you get the more he is going to run away...

Yeah not all men are the same..

yeah that is true, i do find it hard to trust people now, but even if he does nothing wrong, just him not being there, i imagine the worst possible scenario like he just doesnt care about me and he doesnt actually like being with me. I can come across clingy and not realise it until things are over. I hate myself for it, but i dont know how to just feel calm and secure

That's an easy trap to fall into - it sounds like you need to believe in yourself a bit more! Even if you do suffer from paranoia, the right person will understand that and therefore never give you any cause to doubt their feelings for you.

(Original post by Anonymous)
Work on your self esteem before getting in another relationship - otherwise your insecurities will ruin it and another bad experience with get you into a pattern of behaviour that is really hard to get out of.

Do you have any advice about how i can improve self esteem?
It so annoying, i trusted people, they mess me around behind my back. Now i can't trust anyone and although i try and hide it, i end up questioning and overanalysing things which understandably.. drives people away..

OP - I am like this too. I find the best way to deal with it is to try to compartmentalise the past and the present. So whenever you feel insecure about your current boyfriend, take a deep breath and make a conscious decision to think rationally. Remind yourself that he is a different person to your previous boyfriends. Remind yourself that he does care about you, and it might be helpful to gather little titbits of things that are evidence of this, that will make you feel better when you start to feel insecure. For instance, a thing my boyfriend does is very occasionally mouth "I love you" at me when we're in a big group of people but no one's looking. Whenever I start to worry I just make an effort to remind myself of this sort of thing and it does help a good deal.

(Original post by Anonymous)
OP - I am like this too. I find the best way to deal with it is to try to compartmentalise the past and the present. So whenever you feel insecure about your current boyfriend, take a deep breath and make a conscious decision to think rationally. Remind yourself that he is a different person to your previous boyfriends. Remind yourself that he does care about you, and it might be helpful to gather little titbits of things that are evidence of this, that will make you feel better when you start to feel insecure. For instance, a thing my boyfriend does is very occasionally mouth "I love you" at me when we're in a big group of people but no one's looking. Whenever I start to worry I just make an effort to remind myself of this sort of thing and it does help a good deal.

Good luck.

thanks for you advice.
It doesnt help that my last relationship (the one i seemed to have ruined), the guy actually did mess me about a bit before we were in a relationship, it was complicated as at first i did reject a relationship, but then he started seeing someone shortly after, who he said was just a rebound. Now me and him are broken up, she has been to stay at his house and they talk all the time on fb. I'm now thinking, was the whole relationshop a lie? did he really ever want me? how can he see her when he claimed he never fancied her? did i ruin everything? if i wasnt so paranoid and annoying he would still be with me? but what if im not crazy and everything i was worried about was true.

I think whoever i went out with i would think they wernt interested in me. I think its more of a how i feel about myself thing. past relationships have made me feel like i can't have a decent guy, im not fun enough, im not going to be more important to anyone than someone else, i will never come first to anyone because im not as good as others.
Do you feel like this too? Do you know how i could improve self esteem?

I feel like I'm too clingy all the time, but I'm not I get really non-clingy and kind of a weird distant...thank goodness my boyf has his quirks too otherwise we would have had some major issues.

I am super insecure about my relationship sometimes because of some things that happened in my childhood, if I don't hear from him for a couple days then I start to get super crazy feeling, but thankfully that doesnt happen too often, but when it does trust that I burst out my issues on TSR...great therapy it is

You superimpose your poor self-esteem onto relationships in order to (justify and) question the motives of current boyfriends based on previous experience, which then destabilises your current relationship and perpetuates your poor self-esteem. The only way to change your behaviour is to inverse the behaviour you superimpose onto your relationships.

You have to understand that a person's self-worth is completely abstract to their biology. A thin girl may believe she is fat because she has a distorted sense of self-worth, which fails to identify her biological reality. But it is relational. She can only believe she is fat because she can differentiate between fat and thin.

Instead of referencing your self-esteem issues against reality you continue use your distorted sense of self-worth; if you looked at yourself and made a logical conclusion that your boyfriend was comparatively more attractive than yourself then you gain a sense of closure, or justify your behaviour rationally.

By failing to correct this behaviour not only do you ruin your relationships but you also distort the behaviour of your partners so they actually become and behave like you feared. The solution? If you feel your boyfriend does not contact you enough, whether this is rational or not is irrelevant, then you have to reverse your behaviour. This forces your boyfriend to alter his behaviour, and gradually normalises your sense of self-worth so it is closer to what it should be.

I am like this too - and yeah, generally think my boyfriend is waaay out of my league. It can be a really difficult mindset to shake....so I just try to stick to all the compliments he has given me or his family/friends have said to him about me. :/ But I don't know. Meh.

(Original post by evantej)
You superimpose your poor self-esteem onto relationships in order to (justify and) question the motives of current boyfriends based on previous experience, which then destabilises your current relationship and perpetuates your poor self-esteem. The only way to change your behaviour is to inverse the behaviour you superimpose onto your relationships.

You have to understand that a person's self-worth is completely abstract to their biology. A thin girl may believe she is fat because she has a distorted sense of self-worth, which fails to identify her biological reality. But it is relational. She can only believe she is fat because she can differentiate between fat and thin.

Instead of referencing your self-esteem issues against reality you continue use your distorted sense of self-worth; if you looked at yourself and made a logical conclusion that your boyfriend was comparatively more attractive than yourself then you gain a sense of closure, or justify your behaviour rationally.

By failing to correct this behaviour not only do you ruin your relationships but you also distort the behaviour of your partners so they actually become and behave like you feared. The solution? If you feel your boyfriend does not contact you enough, whether this is rational or not is irrelevant, then you have to reverse your behaviour. This forces your boyfriend to alter his behaviour, and gradually normalises your sense of self-worth so it is closer to what it should be.

Mind ****?

That is really confusing...
If a boyfriend doesnt contact me enough, i shouldnt feel negatively about it even though it may be rational.. and me not feeling negatively about it will make him contact me more?

I realise i have to hold things back, but it still eats at me. Do you know how i can change the way i feel?
eg. if a boyfriend says something like its an ego boost to be with me, i can not question it, but i will still feel like crap. Or if i think i don't get enough attention, i can go without questioning it, but i will still feel the same.

ermmmm be friends with people for a long time before getting together? lol
and find someone who is similar to yourself? e.g. likes clinginess?

also when in a relationship, like someone else mentioned... when you start to have insecure and negative thoughts, stop yourself and analyse each thing, not just negatively.. but also analyse them positively e.g. he hasnt contacted me ... could show he's lost interest but its MORE likely that he hasnt got any credit, he hasnt got his phone with him, theres no signal, or his busy. theres so many posibilities with things, you just have to let the positive explanations overide the negative ones, what i do is say the positive things loudly and confidently in my head, then i start to believe it and get less paranoid.

you need to stop questioning how he feels about you, thinking about it every now and then is ok and analyse things, but after thats done, leave it. that often works for me... i think of negative explanations for things, then i forget about it and be happy again, maybe that'll work for you?

(Original post by Anonymous)
Since i have started having relationships i have had some bad experiences. Not really bad, but have been cheated on, only there because of attraction not because he actually cared etc. I know not all men are the same etc but when in the majority of your relationships you have been treated like crap, it seems impossible to believe people want to be with you and dont have an alterior motive.

I ruined my last relationship and it didnt last long because i was really paranoid and ended up questioning everything. If i didn't hear from him much in a day i would be convinced and feel he just didnt like me much. Even if things are going well, i think things must be too good to be true. Im basically just really paranoid and insecure. Its hard to believe someone actually wants to be with me for who i am and prefers me to other girls. Because this is how i feel, it shows through little things i do and i end up appearing clingy and arguing over small things.

I really want to change, i don't want to ruin another relationship. Does anyone have any advice?

I've found that a lot of girls which are shorter than the average man (usually 5'8" or below) have something called Short Girl Syndrome (SGS) - where theyre really insecure about their height, so insist on getting a taller partner to compensate

(Original post by 8 is enough)
I've found that a lot of girls which are shorter than the average man (usually 5'8" or below) have something called Short Girl Syndrome (SGS) - where theyre really insecure about their height, so insist on getting a taller partner to compensate